Save time and hassle and minimise the chance of damage from multiple handling. An exciting new development from the team at ATS Timber. We now offer a direct-to-site freight options in all the main metro centres in New Zealand including:

Auckland

Hamilton

Tauranga

Palmerston North

Wellington

Christchurch

All other regions are also available and will be priced on application. Call our sales team to discuss this on your next order. Priced on a simple-to-follow schedule that offers fixed costs in relation to the size of the order. Details of this will be featured in The Timber Book which will be launched in July. Watch this space.

ATS Timber is a certified supplier of PEFC™ CoC sustainable timber. The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC™) is an international non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) through independent third-party certification.

PEFC™ works throughout the entire forest supply chain to promote good practice in the forest and to ensure timber and non-timber forest products are produced with respect for the highest ecological, social and ethical standards

With 36 endorsed national certification systems and more than 260 million hectares of certified forests, PEFC™ is the words largest forest certification system

We have compiled some very interesting facts and history behind Spruce timber. Enjoy!….

Spruce Beer

Spruce tips have been used in the brewing process for hundreds of years. In fact, they were one of the main additions in beer before people learned about brewing with hops! Spruce tips add a fresh, bright aroma. The fresh, tender tips have a mellow pine scent and a crisp flavor. A number of refreshing flavors are associated with spruce-flavored beverages, ranging from floral, citrusy, and fruityto cola-like flavors to resinous and piney. This diversity in flavor mainly comes from the choice of spruce species, the season in which the needles are harvested, and the manner of preparation. Lighter, more citrus-like flavors are produced by using the bright green fresh spring growth before the new needles and twigs harden and become woody, which is right when we pick ‘em!

The fresh shoots of many spruces and pines are a natural source of vitamin C (which helps the stability of the finished beer). Captain Cook made alcoholic sugar-based spruce beer during his sea voyages in order to prevent scurvy in his crew. Recently spruce has been used as a flavoring ingredient in commercial beer such as Alba Scots Pine Ale and Alaskan Brewing Company’s Winter Ale and Wigram Brewing Company’s Spruce Beer, which is based on Captain Cooks first beer brewed in New Zealand in 1773.

The ‘Spruce Goose’

The largest airplane ever constructed, and flown only one time, the Spruce Goose represents one of man’s greatest attempts to conquer the skies. It was born out of a need to move troops and material across the Atlantic Ocean, where in 1942, German submarines were sinking hundreds of Allied ships. Henry Kaiser, steel magnate and shipbuilder, conceived the idea of a massive flying transport and turned to Howard Hughes to design and build it. Hughes took on the task, made even more challenging by the government’s restrictions on materials critical to the war effort, such as steel and aluminum. Six times larger than any aircraft of its time, the Spruce Goose, also known as the Flying Boat, is made entirely of wood.

Originally designated HK-1 for the first aircraft built by Hughes-Kaiser, the giant was re-designated H-4 when Henry Kaiser withdrew from the project in 1944. Nevertheless, the press insisted on calling it the “Spruce Goose” despite the fact that the plane is made almost entirely of birch.

The winged giant made only one flight on November 2, 1947. The unannounced decision to fly was made by Hughes during a taxi test. With Hughes at the controls, David Grant as co-pilot, and several engineers, crewmen and journalists on board, the Spruce Goose flew just over one mile at an altitude of 70 feet for one minute. The short hop proved to skeptics that the gigantic machine could fly.

Perhaps always dreaming of a second flight, Hughes retained a full crew to maintain the mammoth plane in a climate-controlled hangar up until his death in 1976.

Christmas Tree

Spruce is one of the most popular Christmas Tree options in the northern hemisphere.

Every year at Christmas time, a tree is placed in the Rockefeller Center in New York City. They look for the largest, most beautiful tree they can find. Year after year their favorite is the Norway Spruce. Its strong branches are able to hold up the thousands of lights and ornaments, and being outside the needles stay on the tree for a long time. The tallest tree ever used was a 100-foot Norway Spruce from Killingworth, Conn. in 1948. After X-mas the tree is cut into lumber and used to build a house.

The Norway spruce tree is one of the fastest growing varieties of evergreens, and only takes about 3 years to grow to Christmas tree height. Under good conditions, these trees can grow up to 3 feet a year for the first 25 years. They’re also dense, making them a great choice for a privacy barrier or wind screen. The Norway spruce is hardy as well, and can withstand drought conditions.

The Wright Brothers

A recently discovered letter from the Wright Cycling Co. reveals spruce grown in West Virginia was used to build frames for the Wright brothers’ first flying machines.

The typewritten letter dated March 5, 1904, and hand-signed by Wilbur Wright as the “Wright Cycling Co.” in Dayton, indicates the brothers were searching for 500 feet of “the finest possible” spruce, free of knots with grain “free from twist.”

“We have found it impossible to obtain this lumber in our local yards,” the letter states. “Can you supply our need?”

Apparently the West Virginia Spruce Lumber Co. in Cass had what the Wrights needed.

Check stubs housed at Wright State University Libraries indicate the Wright brothers purchased $45 worth of lumber from West Virginia Spruce three weeks later, said Dawne Dewey, director of public history and head of special collections and archives.

Old Tjikko

This ancient, 16-foot tall Norway spruce lives in the scrubby Fulufjället Mountains in Sweden. At 9,550 years, Old Tjikko is the oldest single-stemmed clonal tree, and took root not long after the glaciers receded from Scandinavia after the last ice age. To figure out the hardy spruce’s age, scientists carbon-dated its roots. For thousands of years, the forbidding tundra-climate kept Old Tjikko in shrub form. But as weather warmed over the last century, the shrub has grown into a full-fledged tree. The spruce’s discoverer, geologist Leif Kullman, named the tree after his dead dog.

A platform for home remodelling and design it is now a community of more than 25 million. This amazing website brings together architects, homeowners and home professionals in a uniquely visual community.

It is now used in over 197 countries worldwide and is the perfect tool to showcase the amazing projects we have supplied specialised timber products into. As well as that we have set up inspiration ‘ideabooks‘ that feature incredible timber projects from around the world to spark of great ideas on how you can incorporate timber into your next project.

Intro

Building in a sustainable and responsible way is fast growing in its popularity globally and New Zealand is a growing part of this green building revolution. We have detailed in this post some of the key institutes and organisations both in New Zealand and globally, along with sustainable timber certification standards that are readily available to give you and insight into this market and how we are a key supplier to this revolution. ATS Timber is certified to supply FSC® and PEFC™ certified products for use in green building projects.

Amazing facts:

Worldwide, buildings consume nearly 40% of the worlds energy (3 billion tonnes of raw material annually)
We spend an average of 90% of our time in buildings-and the air quality inside is two to five times worse than outside air.
The construction industry is responsible for as much as 40% of man-made carbon emissions
Timber is the only mainstream building material that is naturally renewable and carbon negative
By 2015, an estimated 40-48% of new non-residential construction by value will be green, equating to a $120-145 billion opportunity
Timber is the greenest building material known to man
The top 3 industry sectors with the highest penetration of green building are; education, healthcare and office
Timber is a renewable resource with an eco-efficient life-cycle; timber products can be reused, repaired, recycled and, at the end of their life, their energy can be recovered.

New Zealand Green Building Council

“Our vision is that New Zealanders live, work and play in healthy, efficient and productive buildings in a sustainable built environment” NZGBC

The New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) is a not-for-profit, industry organisation dedicated to accelerating the development and adoption of market-based green building practices. We do this through:

Promoting the benefits of sustainable buildings by creating a common language and demonstrating the value.
Assisting the property and construction sector to acquire the skills and knowledge to be able to deliver a sustainable built environment.
Motivating and rewarding the sustainable development and operation of buildings across New Zealand.

The NZGBC was established in July 2005 and in 2006 became a member of the World Green Building Council (WGBC). The WGBC is an international not-for-profit organisation that aims to move the global property industry and built environment towards sustainability, with Green Building Councils being established in various countries around the world.

Living Building Challenge

The Living Building Challenge™ is a building certification program, advocacy tool and philosophy that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and acts to rapidly diminish the gap between current limits and the end-game positive solutions we seek.

The Challenge is comprised of seven performance categories called Petals: Place, Water, Energy, Health & Happiness, Materials, Equity and Beauty. Petals are subdivided into a total of twenty Imperatives, each of which focuses on a specific sphere of influence. This compilation of Imperatives can be applied to almost every conceivable building project, of any scale and any location—be it a new building or an existing structure. Download the Living Building Challenge 3.0 Standard document below.

The Living Building Challenge™ is the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard. It calls for the creation of building projects at all scales that operate as cleanly, beautifully and efficiently as nature’s architecture. To be certified under the Challenge, projects must meet a series of ambitious performance requirements over a minimum of 12 months of continuous occupancy.

Living Building Challenge Mission

To encourage the creation of Living Buildings, Landscapes and Communities in countries around the world while inspiring, educating and motivating a global audience about the need for fundamental and transformative change.

For timber, all wood must be certified to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®)24 100% labeling standards, from salvaged sources, or from the intentional harvest of timber onsite for the purpose of clearing the area for construction or restoring/maintaining the continued ecological function of the onsite bionetwork.

LEED

LEED stands for green building leadership. LEED is transforming the way we think about how buildings and communities are designed, constructed, maintained and operated across the globe.

LEED certified buildings save money and resources and have a positive impact on the health of occupants, while promoting renewable, clean energy.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, is a green building certification program that recognizes best-in-class building strategies and practices. To receive LEED certification, building projects satisfy prerequisites and earn points to achieve different levels of certification. Prerequisites and credits differ for each rating system, and teams choose the best fit for their project.

LEED certified buildings are commanding higher rental rates and great occupancy than the non-green buildings. This trend cannot help but impact the Investment community. The supply while gradually increasing is not keeping up with the demand for green buildings. LEED New Construction buildings are awarded points for sustainability for things like energy-efficient lighting, low-flow plumbing fixtures and collection of water to name a few.

Recycled construction materials and energy efficient appliances also impact the point rating system. In the political climate of today’s world, as the earth’s natural resources are being depleted at an alarming rate the construction industry is being compelled to look at alternatives to traditional construction materials and styles.

BREEAM

BREEAM is the world’s foremost environmental assessment method and rating system for buildings, with 250,000 buildings with certified BREEAM assessment ratings and over a million registered for assessment since it was first launched in 1990.

BREEAM sets the standard for best practice in sustainable building design, construction and operation and has become one of the most comprehensive and widely recognised measures of a building’s environmental performance. It encourages designers, clients and others to think about low carbon and low impact design, minimising the energy demands created by a building before considering energy efficiency and low carbon technologies.

A BREEAM assessment uses recognised measures of performance, which are set against established benchmarks, to evaluate a building’s specification, design, construction and use. The measures used represent a broad range of categories and criteria from energy to ecology. They include aspects related to energy and water use, the internal environment (health and well-being), pollution, transport, materials, waste, ecology and management processes.

BREEAM can be used to assess any type of building anywhere in the world. Standard schemes have been developed for many building types e.g. offices, retail developments, industrial buildings etc. BREEAM UK also has standard schemes that have been tailored with input from key stakeholders/clients in the UK such as healthcare, prisons and other non-standard building types. ‘Bespoke’ criteria can be used to assess building types that do not fall into the scope of the standard schemes available.

We will be closed for business on the 23rd December 2014 and reopening on the 7th January 2015. We would like to take the opportunity to thank all stakeholders for contributing to our biggest year in over 20 years. We have some more exciting initiatives planned for 2015, starting with the launch of the new Kingfisher Spruce Range. Watch for more developments.

Instead of customer desk calendars for 2015, we made the decision to contribute to some worthy causes in our community. See our Charitable Giving page for more info.

At ATS Timber we believe in helping others in need. Our mission statement mentions ‘to include all stakeholders needs are considered for generously’ and that includes indirect stakeholders such as charities beyond our direct stakeholders such as staff and suppliers. We do this by donating to a number of local community and national charities. We do a wide range of research prior to selecting charities we will support and those that take priority are the ones that have touched the lives of our staff and friends.

Very clever use of Douglas Fir. The rough-sawn boards of 200 x 25 Douglas Fir make an incredible effect of its prominent grain when concrete slabs are poured over it. This huge architectural home has these concrete panels for both interior and exterior featured throughout. Carefully laid on a slab with both for the face and the edge of the panels it produced an eye-catching wall when panels were raised from the slab. Contact our timber consultants today with your unique requirements.

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